Opinion: A Perfect Man to Mosh for Trump

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On Wednesday evening, I awoke from a nap to find my Twitter
mentions filled with screenshots from CNN's coverage of a Donald
Trump campaign rally in Anaheim, California. While I was caught off
guard initially, it wasn't long before my sleepy eyes recalibrated
and focused on the enormous upper body bust of Tito Ortiz: his
chest, shoulders and head making him appear twice the size of every
other human in the hard camera-facing gallery.

Mixed martial arts fans love to make fun of Ortiz and frankly, with
good reason. Ortiz's outlandish excuse making, hilarious
malapropisms and generally over-the-top persona have made him an
easy target of mockery over the last decade or so. Having him front
and center supporting the most polarizing, bombastic demagogue in
recent memory is too delicious and too expected to resist.

But, most of the Tito-Trump laughs I see on social media seem to
hinge on the idea that Ortiz is hapless and gaffe-prone and that as
a target of ridicule who always seems to say or do the worst (or at
least laughable) thing in any given context, of course he
would be a Trump supporter. Regardless of how politically informed
he may or may not be as a voter, Ortiz's Trump support is
legitimately intriguing: it may surprise you, but “The Huntington
Beach Bad Boy” is the very essence of the pro-Trump majority and a
refutation of the laziest political analysis concerning Trump's
surge in popularity.

If you've followed the 2016 American election season at all, you've
assuredly heard the idea that Trump's emergence as a viable
American presidential candidate is predicated on stoking fear and
racial animus among the
“white working class.” This is really just a coded cable news
political wonk euphemism: the suggestion is that a lamentable
coalition of racist, gun-loving trailer trash are single-handedly
buoying an otherwise illegitimate campaign. As if that sort of
classist sneering from professional political analysts isn't bad
enough, it's also flat wrong.

In the last couple of weeks, it's finally become irrefutable that
this characterization was garbage.
Exit polls have repeatedly shown that Trump supporters
typically have college degrees -- like Tito Ortiz --
and in many states, Trump was the preferred within a then-field of
six among voters with postgraduate degrees. In the Massachusetts
primary, 45 percent of college graduates voted Trump, and 28
percent of those with postgraduate degrees voted Trump; in
Tennessee, it was 38 percent of college grads and a massive 36
percent of those with postgraduate degrees.

Finally, the likes of Nate Silver and Co. have gotten around
to poking another hole in the theory, as it turns out the
median income of a Trump supporter is about $72,000 per year. The
average Ted Cruz supporter was only marginally higher at $73,000,
while Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders supporters averaged around
$61,000.

Trump voters come in all kinds, but as a fairly affluent, but by no
means notably rich 41-year-old American with a college degree,
Ortiz is essentially a boilerplate Trump voter, contrary to what
you may have heard. In fact, this isn't even the first time that
Ortiz has made it known he's backing the curiously-coiffed real
estate mogul for prez. When you look at Ortiz's reasons for backing
Trump, it makes it apparent that his presidential preference goes
much deeper than demography.

In late January, Ortiz made an appearance on “In the Loop” on
Houston's SportsRadio 610 and said in
no uncertain terms he was a Trump man. Here's some of what
Ortiz had to say about why Trump won his vote, in spite of both
Ortiz's Mexican heritage as well as Trump personally voting him off
of the seventh season of “The Apprentice”:

“I'm a Trump guy, I wasn't in the beginning, of course. I’m Mexican
when he said we need to take all the Mexicans out of the United
States, well, good luck on that one. They’ll find a way to get back
here anyways. But, in the long run, I think he wants to bring money
back to our country and with the debt that we are in, I think he
has an opportunity to do that.”

On foreign policy and possible domestic terrorism:

“It’s just not Mexicans that we have worry about. It’s the Muslims,
it’s the radicals; that come in that have the opportunity to come
into our country and do the thing with terrorism that’s hindering
our country. We shouldn’t be afraid to walk around and look over
our shoulders and some guy has a bomb in his pocket or something
stupid.”

And, maybe most telling of all, what's truly inspiring about
Trump:

“For a person to become a billionaire, to be flat broke, bankrupt,
to rebuild himself to be a billionare, now to become almost the
President of the United States, it's amazing. He's a hard worker.
He can make America great again. That's my vote for him.”

These three statements are a holy trinity of traits that mark the
most ardent Trump supporters. One, as the average Trump supporter
tends to be solidly middle class to upper middle class if not
wealthier, Ortiz shares the general anxiety of Trump's would-be
electorate has about their wealth somehow drying up in front of
their very eyes. They tend not be Marco Rubio-esque “proper” fiscal
conservatives, just Americans who are liquid and comfortable and
suspect that could all be taken away from them in a heartbeart.
Secondly, he shares the interconnected belief that some combination
of immigration and domestic terrorism could be the catalyst to
enact that scenario.

The most hardline Trump fans, those who have supported him
throughout primary season before he toppled other wannabe
Republican nominees, those who are voting for him out of zeal
rather than a distaste for Clinton or Sanders -- those like Ortiz
-- are forever fearful of these blurry-if-not-invisible monsters
creeping in the political haze, ready to take everything they've
worked for.

And that brings us to why Ortiz really relates to Trump in his own
mind. It should come to no one's surprise that Ortiz says he was
converted to a Trump supporter after considering “The Donald's”
myriad financial comebacks. Whether right or wrong, Ortiz has
always tried to frame his achievements as the
product of relentless hard work and dedication and likewise,
Trump is always keen to paint himself a bootstrapper.

The irony of bootstrapping is rich with Trump, who of course always
talks about starting out with a “modest loan of a million dollars”
and once said in a New York Magazine feature that “everything in
life is luck.” Ortiz's story is much more hardscrabble: his parents
were drug addicts, he was addicted to crystal meth as a teenager
and hanging out with gangs in Santa Ana, Calif. At the same time,
Ortiz was a fantastic athlete and just happened to know Paul Herrera,
a UFC veteran who was coaching wrestling at Golden West College and
gave him a life-altering chance. Through Herrera, he also happened
to be connected to “Tank” David Abbott,
from whom he stole his “Huntington Beach Bad Boy” nickname from and
would eventually help grease the wheels for Ortiz to make his UFC
debut.

There is luck in Ortiz being located in southern California, an MMA
hotbed long before the sport was legal in the state, and just
happening to have the right connections to eventually get a UFC
bid. There is tremendous luck in his timing, period: if Ortiz was a
bit younger, he might've missed the natural bridge into MMA or at
least entered the sport later under different circumstances. Even
if he comes along later, does he end up feuding with the Lion's Den
team, the rivalry that helped make him the UFC's posterboy for
years? Ortiz has undoubtedly worked his ass for nearly 20 years in
MMA, but like most self-professed, self-identified bootstrappers,
there is a considerable measure of “right place, right time” that
gets ignored. After all, Donald Trump claims that even if he was
born in a coal mine, he would've left,
because he has “imagination” that others simply don't.

The bootstrapping narrative is crucial in this conversation. It's a
cornerstone of populist campaigning: it reaffirms the misguided
idea that America, or any place on Earth for that matter, is a pure
meritocracy, where hard work always pays off and the cream rises to
the top. A presidential candidate or former UFC champion going hard
on this concept is essentially preaching radical self-belief to
others, so it's probably not a surprise we find that trait in
them.

Trump and Ortiz are both weirdly cocksure when discussing their
professional and even personal failures. Trump always has a million
ways to spin prior bankruptcies or explain real estate implosions
by saying the contractors sucked and they simply fired them. Ortiz
has spent most of his career explaining his losses via an insane
spectrum of maladies and injuries, probably the primary reason he's
transformed into an MMA figure of satire, most famously his
“cracked skull” at UFC 106 in the Forrest
Griffin rematch. Neither of them have much of a problem
addressing, at least obliquely, their past failed marriages and
both of them have taken great lengths in their books -- Ortiz in
“This is Gonna Hurt” and Trump in “The Art of the Comeback” -- to
detail their myriad nuptial infidelities.

The sorts of shortcomings that most of us struggle to admit and
confront? Water off a duck's back for them, always a
rationalization or explanation to be had, however seemingly insane.
Yet, what hurts their feelings, what can actually shake the
self-belief of folks like Trump and Ortiz? Strange, emasculating
slights.

Now, admittedly, Ortiz and Trump are just too perfect as
bedfellows, I could play armchair psychologist all day. It's no
wonder Ortiz sees Trump in himself as he did try to win “Celebrity
Apprentice,” after all. You're not going to find too many Trump
supporters more perfectly cut from the same idiosyncratic cloth as
the candidate himself than Ortiz, right down to their foggy “Yeah,
Jesus is pretty great” religious politics, undying support of the
troops, dating famous beautiful women and public freakouts over
their Fruedian nightmares.

That said, as much as I enjoy how amusingly similar Ortiz and Trump
in their public personas, this is what's more important: Ortiz
rallying for Trump isn't just about the more granular, neurotic
ways that these men are similar. Ortiz isn't voting for Trump
because he's a non-sensical
trainwreck all that we've come to love in MMA, catering to our
satirical fantasies. Sure, the greatest political statement Ortiz
has ever really made is entering the cage to “Mosh” by Eminem, but
that doesn't mean he isn't incredibly indicative of a passionate
Trump majority which has been miscast from its outset by sloppy
political analysis.

When Ortiz decided he was done with Tank Abbott's nickname, he
laughably chose to refashion himself “The People's Champion,”
because he represented “the people.” He hasn't exactly done a great
job literally
representing people as a manager, either. As a Trump supporter,
Ortiz is as representative as he's ever been.